Welcome to Gaia! ::

Hvergelmir hadn't been getting a lot of knight mail lately -- nor much contact with anyone at all. After the recent events, things seemed to be quiet, and she wondered if she was finding herself less welcome among her fellow knights than she had before.

It was surprising, then, to receive the letter from quiet Falias -- and more surprising still that he seemed to think he owed her some kind of apology. She couldn't imagine what for.

It was a rare circumstance, as far as she could tell, for him to reach out to others, and what was more, he was asking for help. She didn't consider refusing for even a moment.

Hvergelmir arrived at the appointed time, glad to find Falias already waiting. "Falias," she said, her smile genuine, "it's good to see you. How have you been?"

Hvergelmir smiled and shrugged off Falias's question about her own health. "I spent about a month rolling around the floor with the death flu, so I haven't gotten out much in a while -- but by the grace of, well, just a ton of Chicken and Stars soup, I'm right as rain now. Getting back into the swing of things like this helps a lot."

She'd never liked fielding questions about herself, her own well-being. It felt like such an imposition. Better to keep the subject on the other person, to always remind them they were cared for. That was how you made friends, after all. And she badly wanted to make a friend of Falias.

Of Sarras, she sighed and said, "I doubt it's your fault you couldn't find him. No one I've spoken to has seen him since around that time. I think -- I think he might have already been long gone. Maybe back to Texas."

She said this because it was a more pleasant option than the other ones she was considering: that he was dead; that he had been taken by the Negaverse. If either was the case, they'd learn about it soon enough -- and there was little they could do until then. It was better to be hopeful. Maybe he'd simply cut and run.

"Were you hurt?" she asked. "Going into Negaspace. I understand we lost many people."

Hvergelmir smiled gently, at the mention of Sailor Cosmos. "That seems right," she said. "If anyone would have the power to do something like that, Cosmos would. She's the princess that Cosmos knights share our power with -- very kind. Very tired. I'm glad she came for you. I'd heard something like that."

Most of her attention, though, was not for the information Falias had given. It was for Falias himself, and what impressions of him she'd formed so far. He was distant, a loner -- unsure of how to make connections with people. Willing, perhaps -- but carrying a great deal of pain that made opening himself up to others like opening up a barely-healed wound.

He was reticent. He kept himself a little socially apart.

"Some wounds," she said, laying a hand over her breast, "can be a moment on the flesh -- and an eternity on the heart. I understand that many people were killed."

Hvergelmir said nothing else, but let the statement stand. If Falias wanted to talk about it, she wanted to make herself available for that -- but if he wasn't ready to, or she wasn't the right person, she didn't think pushing him would help, and if he had already found some measure of peace with it, she didn't want to cause him any measure of survivor's guilt. Sometimes it was enough just to acknowledge suffering. Sometimes people needed permission to heal, or to still be in pain. Grief was so delicate.

Hvergelmir felt, for a moment, a divine feeling of relief. Her work, her oath, put her in a strange position: not a warrior, not quite an ally. Whatever strange place she occupied among her fellow knights and their allied sailor soldiers, she was still in the process of understanding what it was. It was a journey every day and every minute, trying to find her place among them and see where she was welcome, what good she could do.

People seemed to see different things in her -- and she always wondered if any of them were real, if any of them were useful. Her attempts, with Babylon, to teach other knights about knighthood. Her efforts to find roles for Mont Blanc and Thrymr. Her struggles to be some kind of a role model to Hyperborea or Teide. Her attempted outreach to loners like Sarras -- like Falias.

Some days she felt like she wasn't succeeding at anything, or like the faith that some people had in her was misplaced.

Today, she felt . . . progress. Value. Falias had turned to her because she had once reached out her hand to him. Her heart swelled with warmth.

This time -- and quite literally -- she held out her hand once again. A calm smile came over her face. "I have all the time in the world."

Falias looked beautiful, dressed in green and dappled in sunlight, surrounded by a wild and quiet expanse of green in all directions. From the moment they arrived, he looked like he belonged.

Hvergelmir likewise lit her aspect, a faint, glimmering glow against the evening shadows -- but she was out of place here, a creature of blue starlight among the yellows and greens of Earth. To Falias, this place had likely begun to grow familiar; to Hvergelmir, it was quite new -- and still struck her with a full sense of wonder, of the great majesty of it. Trees, green and slumbrous, seemed to stretch outward in all directions, as far as she could see.

"It seems peaceful here," she remarked casually, her gaze wandering all about as she followed. "Are there settlements? Is the Lia Fáil something like that?"

Hvergelmir hesitated, considering this information. Hyperborea had told Hvergelmir of her intentions to swear her own knight's oath, and Hvergelmir had tried to encourage her to be cautious, to really be certain that this was what she wanted. Hyperborea had a tendency to rush to decisions -- she was so young.

Falias was not so young. And he'd been searching a very long time for his own path, that much was clear. This decision, at least, seemed to be the first step in that direction. She wasn't inclined to try and sway him from it.

He was a grown man. A peer. He understood the complexities of the world, the risks of commitment. They'd both been at Mistral. They both knew the consequences of taking chances, even when they seemed safe. If he wanted to do this, she felt certain he'd thought it through.

"I'd like to see it some time," she agreed readily. Hvergelmir relished any chance to visit other planets and wonders, to observe and to learn what she could.

She offered a bracing smile back, in response to Falias's self-recrimination. "When I've asked for your help, you've agreed to it. You keep showing up, keep trying to be a knight, no matter how hard it gets and no matter what you've seen. Don't be so sure you're not much of a knight, Falias.

"Have I ever told you about my own oath?"

Hvergelmir looked away, reaching up to rub at the large, sparkling seal on her shoulder. Some part of her was relieved that he'd asked -- but some part of her also wished he hadn't. It had been a while since she'd had to deal with a new person's reaction to her oath, but her memories of it were never particularly validating. No one was ever exactly thrilled about it, or had much confidence in her.

"I'm oathsworn not to raise arms against any Negaverse agents so long as they fight in the belief they're protecting the Earth. I can defend my own life -- nothing else." Her smile was dark, a little wry, but she still didn't look back. "So now which of us is the one that's not much of a knight? At least you can fight for the people you care about."